Orange Beach Trip 2012

We recently got back from our second annual Macon-Edwards OBA Beach Trip! It was an absolute blast, and I'm so grateful that my brother in law has a condo down there! Can't beat a free and nice place to stay! My sis already covered some epic disasters in her beach post, and she is relying on me to provide some good stuff! I'll try!

And, sorry in advance for the eleventy billion photos, but this is my "lifebook" and the grand-parentals will lurve them some baby photos!

Playing with my tele-photo lens

Storm rolling in

Off our balcony-the marina

Look at that precious almost 15 month old!

Sweet cousins-and Emma's evil genius face!

Sissy and "Boodee" as Emma still calls him

My sweet girls! Eating rainbow lollies on the balcony.

Playing in Scarlet's "good girl bed," an inflatable bed she slept on.

One day we went to the Track to ride rides and play games!

Sarah is amazed by the games!

Haha, this cracks me up so hard! Sarah, promise you will put this in her senior yearbook picture ad!

Buddy watching the action-in his dirty a$$ stroller-why do the wheels have to touch the canopy? Gross!

Train ride together-Harrison was actually big enough to ride the train!

Sweet boys!

Sharing a slushie-that ended well. NOT.

Our ticket loot-about 1100 tickets!

We did lots of swimming, playing in the sand, going to the beach a la Clark W Griswold,  naps, sleeping in, eating great food, and just generally enjoying spending lots of time with some of our favorite people! Thank you sissy and brother for the wonderful memories!

Orange Beach on Dwellable

Hello, everyone!

Here are my sweet babies right before Harrison's THIRD haircut. 

Also, I straightened Emma's hair that morning just for kicks-it's cute!

And, notice the giant, awesome bow my sissy gave Emma for her birthday!

 

Sweet Babies!

Carebears Comin' from Somewhere up in the Sky........

Hopefully you are now humming the Carebears theme song from the 80's. Not the new one, the original one!

We love some Carebears around here. Mainly thanks to a cheer bear that Emma stole from my parent's house about a year ago. Ever since, I pick them up when I see them in Goodwill or consignment stores. I also frequent ebay looking for low priced small Carebears to add to the collection. I actually found three brand new ones with tags for $3 at a nicer consignment store. Then my butthole dog ate two of them. And I almost choked him.

Moving on. We love Carebears. So, when I asked Emma what she wanted to do for her third birthday, she said Carebears!! Natch. So I got to planning. And talking. And discussing with my multi-talented MIL (decorator extraordinaire!)

The party came together pretty quickly after only about a week of prep! See below for details! And sorry in advance for the photo bombing. But maybe you want a Carebears party one day.............

The favor bags-I found a birthday website that had Carebears party favors so I got whistles, notepads, and blowers. The other stuff is from Michael's dollar spot or Party City. We only had 5 children, so it wasn't expensive!

The cute lunch plates and napkins from the same site. And that silverware was 0.97 a pack at Walmart! It matched perfectly!

The cute birthday bow wreath I found on Pinterest! So easy and cute!

The lunch table-minus the burgers and dogs!

Another Pinterest find-cut lemon slices, dye in food coloring overnight, freeze, and use as "ice cubes" in a drink.

The appetizer station! Mom's yummy black bean and corn salsa, veggie tray, and fruit kabobs! Rainbow, of course!

Rainbow crayon art-floating around on Twitter, blogs, and Pinterest. So easy and fun!

Cute door hangings that FeFe and GiGi made!

Excuse my mirror flash-a photog I am not. 

Oh here's a pretty little model posing by the bears.

Prezzies!!

Front room decor-we got 2 dozen primary colored balloons for pops throughout the house. The treat bags I showed you earlier were lining the front walk in rainbow colors with matching balloons tied on!

The precious and creative birthday banner my MIL made.

Some of the boys: Dad, Jason, Gerry, Hays

I love this picture of Sitchy with Emma. So cute!

Even though I'm not looking and Emma looks pained, this is sweet.

Scarlet and Margaret Anne

A shirt I found on Etsy for Emma. It was like $10 and is personalized!

Notice Emma is wearing her Carebears pillowcase dress-also found on Etsy for $15!!

Haha, her surprised face!

This is not a great picture of the cupcakes, but it's the only one I could find. See below.

I found this image on Google, printed it off, and took it to Edgar's-the best bakery in Birmingham! They were amazing and looked JUST LIKE the picture! I ordered the cupcake toppers online for like $8.

Cute birthday hats-also found with the party favors and plates/napkins.

Sweet friends sugar loading together.

Dark pic but still sweet of my birthday girl.

OH! And Sarah has something to tell y'all.............baaahahahaha!

Busy Bees and Tweedle Dees

I think I mentioned this to y'all but we were in Birmingham for TEN DAYS at the end of July through the beginning of August. We went because my MIL was having her birthday celebration there, my immediate family is all there, and we decided to make a time of it by having Emma's third birthday there, too. It was much easier this way since no one had to drive to Atlanta on a Friday (yuck!) and I didn't have to clean and prep MY house (yay!)

We kicked off the first weekend there with a lovely celebration for my MIL, FeFe, at a delicious dinner spot in Brookwood called Brio's. It is SO GOOD and I'm so sad we don't have one over here. BUT. That's probably a good thing since we all ate ourselves sick on bread, wedge salad, and delicious main dishes! The next day, MIL's besties threw her a themed Alice in Wonderland tea party for girl's only and it was hilarious and awesome. Two words. Costume Party. For grown women. Hahahahaha! MIL was the Queen of Hearts, Eve was Alice, Jamie was the mad hatter, my mom was the rabbit, Scarlet and Emma were miniature queens, and Sarah and I were......................

Yes. This happened in real life. (Stolen from sissy's blog)

While we were brainstorming what we could be without breaking the bank on a costume, Sarah came up with this. And it was genius. All we bought/made were the hats and bow ties. And a bag of pillow stuffing to create our awesome guts. It was pretty rad.

The following week brought lots of playtime, party prep, and Emma's first two days of school! Emma crashed Scarlet's school and had a lot of fun! 

Sweet cousins!

Then, Scarlet got "croup" and all hell broke loose. My kids started coming down with "it" on Thursday. With Emma's party on Saturday. Yikes. I use quotes because I'm not convinced that Scarlet or my kids had it. I think it was an upper respiratory infection. No one was coughing all night, wet bark style. We are STILL getting over whatever is going on over a week later!

Friday was cray cray. I had booked a cut and color with my stylist cousin, Mo. Y'all. My hair was SO LONG. It was like middle of my back long. I couldn't take it. I told Mo to do something good. She gave me a darker, richer color and cut it to my shoulders. I love it! And it takes 15 minutes to dry and fix!

After the hair appointment, I went to get Emma from school so I could take both kids to the doctor. Alone. Out of town. That was fun. Luckily my mom and sis met me up there to entertain while I filled out 85849409 pages of paperwork. After they went home and napped, I got busy cleaning, organizing, cooking, and decorating. Lots to do! And I couldn't do it all yet because all three kids would be up to destroy things.

We all worked together (thank you so much sis, brother, momma, FeFe, GiGi, Eve, and Jamie!!) to help make Emma's birthday a wonderful, laid back success! That post will have to be next! This is getting long!

New Look!

Come on out of Google Reader and check out my new SWEET look! The amazing Leslie Lambert of Lamberts Lately, and the creative genius at Sweetie Baby's Blog Design worked this over for me!

A few new things:
*Buttons at the top so you can find me on twitter, pinterest, or directly email me.
*Very nice and streamlined with extras running only on the left side, instead of both sides.
*Nice new colors and styles!
*Cute new fonts chosen by ME! And my links are easier to see now.
*A cute, personalized favicon when you open up on your computer. (This makes me really happy!)

Leslie is a breeze to work with, and she "gets" just what you want! She is also VERY reasonably priced. So if any of you are looking for a new, fresh design, holler at her and see what she can do for you!

What do you all think? C'est magnifique??

Meet My NEW Friend!

Thanks to an incredibly generous giveaway from Michelle at Stuttering Shell, and the awesome folks at Oreck, I am now the PROUD owner of the new Oreck Magnesium! 

Look at this blue beauty!

Notice the vacuum lines in the background.

I NEVER win anything, especially on blog giveaways. I only enter giveaways for things I really want. There are so many giveaways always going on, and I don't want to spend hours entering contests for stuff I don't really need or want. That's......a little selfish, in my opinion. Anyway, I entered Michelle's giveaway and when she tweeted me that I won, then Oreck emailed me, I flipped out! I was waiting on it to be a joke!

No joke, this pretty showed up on my doorstep a few days later, and to this self proclaimed OCD vacuum ho, it was like Christmas. I immediately got it out and started vacuuming! It is super lightweight and actually self propelled! Crazy town!

Who has an Oreck? Do you love it?